find all items in list object

Question

I would like to interrogate all new emails (one by one) and find the contents of them so that I can use the contents for another application.

My first step was interpreting the return values from a search done via the search attr of an IMAP4 object. I'm trying to figure out what data is in a list that I have returned to me.
How can I examine the object tree via print? Or, better yet, how can I get the contents of the email in a string?

For ex., I am returned the following via print: unseen email content: ['3 4'] from a variable named "response". If I run print response.__class__.__name__ , I get "list" returned.

I know that there is other data in "3", and "4", I just don't know what.

update: Specifically, this is the return of a call to an IMAP4obj.search(None, '(UNSEEN)')

Answer 1

You may try importing pdb and doing a pdb.pprint.pprint(response)

If it's a program running on your own machine, you can also do a pdb.set_trace() and play with response.

The ipdb module has nicer versions, but it's not usually installed by default.

Answer 2

from the python docs ( here ) this example:

# M is a connected IMAP4 instance...
typ, msgnums = M.search(None, 'FROM', '"LDJ"')

it seems a tuple is returned, you can try,

print(type(typ))
print(dir(typ))
print(type(msgnums))
print(dir(msgnums))

try reading the docs, see if it can help clarify your doubts or even make your question clearer.

Answer 3

Sounds like a debugger might help. If you are using an IDE with a debugger set a break point and introspect the objects.

If you do not use an IDE yet, try Eclipse in combination with PyDev